PDFs won't open since Catalina

I also had this problem. My solution was to right click the pdf file and select Get Info. There is a small section named "Open with:", which showed Preview as the default already. I simply clicked the dropdown button and reselected Preview as the preferred option.

The button "Change All.." then became available to select, which I did select and also then confirmed the dialog box to update to use preview for all similar docs.

Worked after that. Good luck!

Here is something you may try:

in the Finder, press

command-shift-G;

paste the following into the text box:

~/Library/Containers

drag the com.apple.preview folder out of the Containers folder (put it in the desktop for now).

Restart your mac or just log out and back in. See if Preview starts. If all is working you can drag folder from the desktop the trash.

OK. Same issue here I think... Recently I noticed all PDF file icons were defaulting to to Affinity Photo. I used "Get info" on one PDF file and used the "Open with" to reassign to Preview by default, and then hit "Change all". PDF file icons started showing up as Preview again, but trying to open any PDF resulted in Preview getting focus, then a few seconds of nothing, followed by Finder animating the file icon as if it was opening, then nothing... not even an error. Restarted. Nothing. Did some disk first aid, nothing. Hitting space for a quick preview of a PDF worked fine, reassigning PDF's to another app worked fine, reassigning back to Preview and nothing. Opening other image formats in Preview worked fine (jpg, png), opening PDF's in other apps worked fine. I did some of the suggestions listed here, deleting Preview preferences and also the Preview Container directory, logged out and back in again and still no improvement. I created a new test user and logged in – PDFs opened fine in Preview there! Hmmm... It felt like a securities/permission type bug so logged back into my own account (PDF's still failed to open in Preview) and followed https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203538 Initially after following the steps and logging out and back in, still no luck. I gave up at this point, and tried to get on with some work. About an hour later I had to restart as a couple of apps were now unexpectedly starting giving the pinwheel of death opening files. After the restart, PDF's were opening again in Preview! I'm going to assume the guidance to "Reset permissions" procedure in Finder followed by a:

diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`

...may have done the trick, and just required a full restart and not just a logout and login again, however at some point in desperation I did also try a:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

...so can't be 100% as to what the fix may have been. Good luck!

Here is something you may try:

in the Finder, press

command-shift-G;

paste the following into the text box:

~/Library/Containers

drag the com.apple.preview folder out of the Containers folder (put it in the desktop for now).

Restart your mac or just log out and back in. See if Preview starts. If all is working you can drag folder from the desktop the trash.

This Worked for me- thanks

Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

Here is something you may try:

in the Finder, press

command-shift-G;

paste the following into the text box:

~/Library/Containers

drag the com.apple.preview folder out of the Containers folder (put it in the desktop for now).

Restart your mac or just log out and back in. See if Preview starts. If all is working you can drag folder from the desktop the trash.

This worked for me- please note- after rebooting- it took about 30 minutes to run a setup - Thanks

I had exactly same problem. Could not open PDF or JPEG or PNG in my Home Folder. Items in my download folder or synched to my iCloud Drive opened correctly.

Solution - I had to reset permission in my Home folder.

Follow these Apple Support Instructions. Success !!!

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203538

It was the

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

that did it for me after a reset. Tried everything else to no avail.

garycmartin wrote:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

I have had the problem of PDFs not opening since a few weeks after upgrading to Catalina, and I can report that garycmartin's second suggestion works as a temporary workaround. Note: my PDFs have always been set to open in Preview, which is the default (not Affinity Photo, Adobe Acrobat or anything else), so that is not the problem.

Specifically, if I double-click any PDF file (or open Preview and then File...Open...), then I would expect a new window to open up with the PDF file showing, but instead I get nothing. Preview opens, as is clear from the menu bar, but there is no window, and the PDF is not rendered. Interestingly, the file does show in Finder under "Quick Look," just not under Preview.

To workaround this problem, open Terminal (it is an app in the Applications/Utilities folder), type the following command line, and hit return:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Then restart your computer. This will fix Preview for a month or two, after which the problem will recur. I have had to apply the fix about half a dozen times since Catalina.

I hope that someone at Apple is reading this forum and will find this workaround helpful to debug the problem, which has persisted for an inexcusable duration!

I forget which reply I used as a fix but basically followed the following advice:

Finder window - command-shift-G type: ~/Library/Containers find com.apple.preview and I dragged to the desktop.

I restarted MacBook pro. Preview now apparently works and I can open pdf's in Preview.

The advice concluded with trashing the desktop if this worked... which I will do since all went well.

Good luck!

Yes, I've had PDFs failing again to open in Preview a few days ago... I ran:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Rebooted, and all was well again. Something certainly seems to be occasionally causing issues with the launch services register.

It worked! I opened Terminal and pasted :

diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`

then restarted. Preview is now able to open pdfs again. It also solved the issue I was having moving files around in Finder.

Thank you!

I had success following these Apple Directions to correct the Home Folder (Desktop) Permissions for all documents including PDF files which got wiped out by Catalina:   https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203538

However,

The System Preference > Security And Privacy > General tab > "RequirePassword X Hours after sleep or screen saver begins" forces me to reboot my computer 100% of the time when this system setting forces a logout. Very Annoying.

Terry

`/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user` worked for me

Thank you :)!!!

This one was solution:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Get Adobe Acrobat Reader (free) and see if it will work. I had Adobe Acrobat Pro but it started having issues when I went to Mojave so went with Adobe Acrobat Pro DC (the subscription version) and i love it...and, issues with Catalina (at least for me) BTW, with the DC version you can edit PDFs, convert PDFs to Word or Excel docs.

Os it possible to upload one such file (one without any personal or sensitive information, of course) to some place online and post a link, so we can test whether or not the file is corrupted? It seems unlikely that a lot of files got corrupted, and my guess is that this is caused by some software conflict.

Also, try booting in Safe Mode. Do these same files open in Safe Mode?